The hot story of the month around Jamshedpur has been the increasing temperatures felt around the city and the growing concerns around a drought. Newspapers report that by late May, temperatures will be as high as 50C and staying there as the summer peaks around June 21, the solstice. Every morning, the lady who comes to clean the apartment says to me as a way of greeting, “Bahut garmi hai, na? Zyada garmi lagte hai”, indicating that it’s very hot. In fact, it’s much hotter and drier than it used to be.
The fact is that these changes in weather patterns aren’t just peculiar of this year; it’s been a gradual change that has worsened annually, directly caused by global warming. Local Jamshedpur residents remember a time when the unrelenting summer rays were interrupted by daily afternoon showers, which would cool the city. But those days are distant memories of twenty years back. These days, we have to wait for the monsoons for any hope of relief.
In April, The Times of India (Jharkhand edition) reported that “Extreme heat drying up water bodies and triggering flash fires in Jharkhand forests are not just usual implications of summer scorch, rather it has links with climate changes.” The ripple effect of this extreme heat on the environment is great. The traditional Sakhua tree, an important source of timber for Jharkhand state, is no longer flowering because of the lack of conventional rainfall. Droughts also decrease crop yields and result in seed shortages, which contribute the overall poverty of the state. The Gene Campaign even goes as far as to state the Naxal rebellions in Jharkhand are an outcome of poverty caused by poor drought management by the government.
However, Jamshedpur isn’t the only place facing these noticeable changes in climate. Intelligent Life Magazine recently ran a poignant article on the disappearing seasons around the world: in Orissa, an eastern Indian state, farmers have noticed that the monsoon rains no longer follow the predictable schedule of centuries old. The monsoons come earlier than usual, causing floods and destroying crops. In Uganda, farmers have noticed that their once reliable two rainy seasons of three months have been replaced by spotty rains of one month duration. In Kashmir, the brief rainy season between winter and spring, called “tsonth” has completely vanished in the last decade. The examples of missing rainy seasons are numerous and the impact is felt on many levels from the ecological cycle to the millions of farmers whose crops are devastated.
While I sat in my hot, dusty flat lamenting my bad luck for arriving in Jamshedpur during a particularly hot year, I was completely unaware that in actuality, it’s just the world’s back luck that our planet is heating up. The heat in Jamshedpur is certainly unpleasant, but the environmental consequences of global warming are even more unpleasant – for everyone. So the next time you escape from an unusually hot summer’s day into an air conditioned bubble, pause for a moment and think about why it’s so darn hot. And see if you still doubt global warming.
